Civitas Blog

Writing yesterday in the New York Times, Henry Fountain discussed the new ‘lonelier’ American – it’s not just the family which is breaking down in the US, modern life has also taken its toll on friendship. Fountain is referring to the recent sociological study from the universities of Duke and Arizona which found that Americans’ close friendship circles had seriously diminished over the last 20 years. Mirroring a survey carried out in 1985, the study found that Americans, on average, have only two close friends – and that roughly a quarter have no close friends that they can talk to. The average number of people Americans felt they could confide in has dropped from 2.94, the figure in 1985, to 2.08 (the figure in 2004).
While perhaps this all sounds rather ‘pop psychology’ the results of the study, published in the American Sociological Review, actually convey a very serious indictment on modern social organisation and the way in which social networks have declined over recent decades. A modern social organisation which is most likely replicated here in the UK.

Firstly let me apologise for producing another blog on European energy. It’s the last one (probably…!) but energy policy is such a vital issue in European politics at the moment that its hard to ignore! Plus this was just too juicy a development to miss out on…

Oct – Dec 2005: Ukraine refuses to allow Russian gas monopoly Gazprom to gain a stake in the Ukrainian transit network in exchange for continuing below-market pricing of Ukrainian gas. Ukraine says however that market pricing must be slowly phased in and that whilst they will accept a rise, they are only prepared to pay £80/thousand cubic metres (CM) in 2006. Negotiations to find a common position fail.

Jan 2006: Ukraine rejects a final Russian offer – a political concession of a three-month moratorium on price hikes (which would also get them through the winter). In response, Gazprom raises the price to full European market value of $230/thousand cm – significantly higher than the rises charged to other former Soviet states. Ukraine still will not deal. Gazprom turns of the taps to the Ukraine but continues to pump European gas through the Ukrainian transit network. The Ukraine siphons off gas from this supply, stimulating shortages across the EU. They claim that this is gas that they have bought directly from Turkmenistan but Turkmenistan appears to have duplicated contracts and confirmed only a separate contract with Gazprom that accounts for their full annual import capacity.

The dispute was resolved with a deal amounting to the following annual gas balance:
· 41 Billion cubic metres (BCM) of Turkmen gas at $95/thousand cm. This gas is sold by Turkmenistan to Russia at $65/thousand cm at the border and Gazprom’s transit fees to RosUkrEnergo raise the price to approximately $95/ thousand cm
· 15 Bcm of Uzbek/Kazakh gas with rights to re-export in conjunction with Gazexport
· 17 Bcm of Russian gas at market value of $230/ thousand cm

A year on from the bombings here in London, what are we to make of how the Muslim and mainstream community in Britain has reacted to the traitor within the gates - extreme Islamism? Here are a couple of pieces to consider: a disturbing Times poll which reveals how widespread is the militancy within the Islamic community, along with a concerned leader, and the slightly muddled optimism of Ziauddin Sardar's usually trenchant New Statesman column.

No British Prime Minister has ever gone farther out on a limb in support of US public policy than Tony Blair. There is no doubt the his present level of extreme unpopularity with both the electorate and the Labour Party is closely related to his adherence to every nuance of US foreign policy with regard to Iraq.

Whether he was right or wrong to take us to war over the ‘weapons of mass destruction’, there is no denying that Blair was ready to sacrifice his own political prospects in support of his position. In return, the Americans have paid him the compliment of actually knowing who he is. A lucrative career on the US lecture circuit awaits him as soon as he hands in the keys to Downing Street.

However, even Mr Blair’s most disingenuous apologists (Sid and Doris Bonkers) have been taken somewhat aback by his readiness to agree to an extradition treaty that allows the US to extradite British citizens for trial in the USA, without producing any prima facie evidence and on charges that may not constitute criminal offences in this country.

It has been widely reported in the media this week that an Anglican vicar is in the process of garnering enough support from his fellow clergymen and women to be able to table at the General Synod of the Church of England a private member’s motion calling for St George to be replaced by St Alban as patron saint of England.

His ostensible reason for seeking the change is his claim that, of the two purported Christian martyrs to receive canonisation, it is the fourth century British-born Alban who is far more likely to have actually existed and lived in England than George, supposedly a third century Christian Roman soldier born in Cappadocia, now in Turkey, and who, according to legend, was beheaded in Lydda, Palestine, on orders of the Christian-persecuting Emperor Diocletian, after refusing to renounce his faith.

I cannot for the life of me see what entitles the Revd to his apparent confidence that St Alban more probably existed than did George. Granted as pure legend the latter’s victorious tussle with a dragon, that no more shows George never to have existed than does Jesus not accompanying Joseph of Arithemea to England show Jesus never existed.

Given the Reverend’s purported grounds for wishing to retire George as England’s patron saint, are we to assume that, should he have his way, we would next read about him calling for the removal from his church’s hymnal and its wider place in English national life of William Blake’s wonderfully evocative and inspirational poem ‘Jerusalem’?

Should women juggle work and childcare? Give up work to look after their children? Or give up having children and opt for straight and narrow career paths? If women do have children, should the government pay for childcare? Or should husbands? Or should mothers themselves? The motherhood debate rages on. Yet the only thing to have become clear is that there simply isn’t a single, feasible solution to the conundrum. We are better off acknowledging this and rather than attempting - and failing - to come up with a miracle policy, striving to facilitate varying options.

Last week, the Financial Times ran an article telling us that the popularity of the European Union in the UK was on the rise – by nearly twenty percent! Of course, it is easy to get carried away when one is immersed in EU-sceptic arguments all day every day, but surely the EU hasn’t really been doing much to encourage the growing ardour of the Brits.

This really is the height of tokenistic irresponsibility: councillors in Liverpool are agitating for the name of one of the world's most famous streets - Penny Lane - to be changed because it may have been named after a slave-trader. As one of the people interviewed in the Daily Mail's report points out, this attempt to erase social memory, to revise history, is more than stupid. It is also dangerous.

According to a report in today’s Times, the weekend before last a two-day conference took place at Istanbul’s Ceylan Intercontinental Hotel on the challenges and opportunities facing the Muslims of Europe.

Judged by the £500 per night prices that hotel charges, the fact the £300,000 conference bill was met entirely by the British tax-payer clearly suggests it was more the opportunities facing Europe’s Muslims than their challenges that the conference was designed to highlight.

Moreover, given that the organisers saw fit to invite to it the Qatar-based cleric Sheikh Yusif at-Qaradawi and his wife, with their travel and subsistence expenses being met in full by the British tax-payer and all apparently with the full knowledge and blessing of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, it seems it has been the opportunities of not only Muslims of Europe that the conference has been intent on showcasing.

Every night at this time of year, Channel Four broadcasts an episode of its seemingly interminable and tedious Big Brother programme. Friday night episodes reveal the identity of whichever housemate viewers have voted to be evicted that week from the house in which they are incarcerated together for the duration of the series.

At 7.30pm tonight, an hour before the screening of that weekly episode, Channel Four is due to broadcast a current affairs programme that promises to be of far greater public interest and importance.

Paradoxically, and regrettably, rather than about an eviction carried out by an authority resembling far more closely than Channel Four’s reality-tv series that for which George Orwell famously coined that programme's title, tonight’s Channel Four current affairs programme, which goes out as part of its 30 Minutes series of documentaries, tells of the failure of our own government to act against a clear and present threat to the safety of the realm.

Yesterday Civitas brought out its latest publication, ‘Inspection, Inspection, Inspection!’ The report explores how the New Labour government has utilised the education inspectorate, OfSTED, to create a monopoly on what counts as good education in schools. A main area of discussion in the pamphlet is the way in which government regulation is now also imposed on the private sector, via OfSTED – and the illegitimacy of this move. A kind supporter of Civitas pointed out that such criticism about state intervention seems to have been made before – by none other than Harry Potter’s friend Hermione.

In 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' JK Rowling seems to be making similar points about government interference in private schools. Here is an extract from Chapter 11:

'Let us move forward, then, into a new era of openness, effectiveness and accountability, intent on preserving what needs to be perfected, and pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited.' Professor Dolores Jane Umbridge.

‘There was some important stuff hidden in the waffle,’ said Hermione, grimly, ‘How about: “progress for progress’s sake must be discouraged”? How about: “pruning whenever we find practices that ought to be prohibited”?

'Well, what does that mean?' said Ron impatiently.

'I'll tell you what it means,' said Hermione through gritted teeth. 'It means the Ministry's interfering at Hogwarts.'

Firstly, to allay the fears of both my long-suffering readers, this blog isn’t about Energy. It is, however, about Russia and why Europeans just don’t seem to be able to ‘get’ it when dealing with her on the international stage. In this particular case, a scan of news articles this morning led me to a story that Russian businesses were attempting to renege on a contract signed with American firms that Vladimir Putin himself pushed to be ratified. The contract in question: the RIHF-NHL transfer agreement for the Russian ice hockey phenom Evgeni Malkin.

Rory Bremner has published a good article in today's Daily Telegraph about freedom.

A curious case of combined myopia and amnesia seems to have afflicted those western commentators who currently accuse Israel of being engaged at present in unjust, because disproportionate, military activity in Lebanon and Gaza.

According to those afflcited by this malady, while Israel might well have every right to the world’s sympathy as well as to undertake limited reprisals for having suffered the recent kidnapping of three of its soldiers, the scale of death and destruction she has inflicted in response to these kidnappings, especially on the civilian population of Lebanon, is out of all proportion to the enormity of these kidnappings, and can only serve to worsen its long-term security by radicalising still more of those who have been at the receiving end of her response.

David Cameron made a speech yesterday in which he unveiled the main new policies that he intends to implement if his party wins the next election.

He will, he said, provide voters with more leisure rather than tax cuts, as well as opportunity to use that increased leisure in ways he claimed are more life-enhancing and fulilling than those leisure opportunities they currently enjoy.

Last Friday, the government was widely reported to have recently requested local councils and primary health trusts specially to target black and mixed race Caribbean youngsters in an attempt to reduce their comparatively high rates of teen-age pregnancy which do so much to make Britain top of the European league-tables for teenage-conception and teenage-motherhood.

In a letter to council and primary health trusts making the request, Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes stated as the government’s reason for making it the fact that:

‘Teenage pregnancy is strongly associated with poor outcomes for both young parents and their children. It contributes to the transmission of poverty, inequality and low aspirations between generations’.

It hasn’t taken long for the countries of ‘new Europe’, to use Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous phrase, to pick up the bad habits of their ‘older’ siblings in the EU. An article in this week’s Economist argues that the countries of central Europe that joined the EU in May 2004 have lost their reforming zeal and could therefore present problems for the future enlargement of the EU. At the same time, we hear that the EU is planning to push back the date for these countries to join the Schengen area. The Economist argues that western European governments are going to have a hard time convincing voters to allow in more member states like those of eastern Europe. Certainly new member states have a role to play in acquitting themselves better in their attempts to reform. But wouldn’t this be a bit easier if the EU didn’t drag its feet over providing the carrots that must accompany the reforming sticks.

The Schengen issue is particularly pertinent. If the integration of ‘new’ and ‘old’ Europe is a problem, then perhaps making it easier for people from different parts of the EU to meet each other could act as a solution. Sadly, there seems to be little will for this to happen in western Europe. But as long as new member states’ citizens are treated so blatantly as second class, then divides and resentment are only going to solidify.

One picture is said to be worth a thousand words. So, the images shown by clicking on the first link below, first shown by a German television station last Sunday, do much to augment the information provided by clicking on the second link, to explain why Israel is so determined to do all in its power to defeat Hezbollah, and why, despite the tragic scale of the consequent collateral damage from its current assault against Hezbollah, analogies currently being drawn between Israel and the Nazis for having made it are so badly and obscenely misplaced.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=d51poygEXYU&search=mufti%20hitler

http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment071802a.asp

Last week, the new education secretary, Alan Johnson, declared that targets, testing and inspection were vital to school improvement and would therefore be ‘intensified’. This announcement came as a surprise to the education community: the fledglings of cross-party consensus seemed to have developed over the crippling impact of these measures in the state sector. Then this week, Johnson surprised us again by more or less saying that private school teachers were superior to those teaching in the state sector. Yet don’t these two views of Johnson’s actually conflict with each other?